Saturday, November 17, 2018

End of the World, or Birth Pangs? Year B, Pentecost 25, Mark 13.1-8

Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.Amen

When I was in fourth
grade we lived in Irene, a sleepy little farming community in the southeast
corner of South Dakota.We had just
moved there from Wyoming.

One of the first
people to befriend me was Claire Fagerhaug, one of the local farm boys.

I frequently went
out to the Fagerhaug’s and had the opportunity to experience farm life, first
hand.

One Sunday
afternoon, Claire’s parents, Connie and Helmer, took the two of us with them
for a visit with their relatives in Sioux Falls, a big outing.

While we were
there, we went with the relatives to a church meeting that Sunday afternoon, an
old fashioned “revival” in a small white church.I remember sitting there, on a hot Sunday
afternoon while the preacher went on and on.

He was preaching
at great length about the end times, and how the signs were all around us about
the end of the world, and we needed to be prepared.

That was in 1966,
our nation had just been through World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and
were heavily engaged in the Vietnam War.

At home the
cultural revolution of the Sixties was well underway, with anti-war protests,
drugs, and a sexual revolution stimulated in part by the invention of “the Pill”
a few years before.

The civil rights
movement was tearing our country apart.

John Kennedy had
just recently been assassinated.

I find it
interesting now, that often we look back on the fifties and sixties as being
the Golden Age of the American experience, and forget what an incredibly
difficult time that it was.

One thing was
obvious—Change was in the air.

Well, on that
sultry Sunday afternoon, in that little white church in Sioux Falls, the ‘evangelist’
went on and on about how all these things were signs that the world was coming
to an end, and sooner rather than later.

When we got back
to the farm that evening, I was troubled.

I asked Connie,
my Sunday school teacher, about the end of the world and what that preacher had
to say.Her response is one of the most
important things I have ever heard, before or since, regarding my own faith
convictions.

“I don’t worry
much about the end of the world”, she said.“As far as I’m concerned, when I die the world will come to an end for
me, and nothing else really matters.”

History is
dotted, throughout the ages, with times of epic transformation which inevitably
brought great suffering on the part of many people.

For the people of
Israel there was the captivity and slavery in the land of Egypt, followed by
the Exodus and journey to the promised land.

Then, things
began to unravel.

First, the
Kingdom was divided following the death of Solomon.

Then in 722 BC
the Northern Kingdom was destroyed and the people dispersed.

In 687 the
southern kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonian Empire and the people went
into exile and slavery once again.

A generation
later they were able to return to Palestine and begin the long process of
rebuilding.

But the
subsequent centuries brought major wars and conquests, with Israel being ruled
by one foreign power after another.

At the time of
Jesus, of course, it was the Roman Empire that ruled Israel.

Looming on the
horizon was the most disastrous event to affect the Jewish people since the
birth of their nation.

One leader after
another would arise in Israel, claiming to be the Messiah, and leading a rebellion
against the rule of the Roman Empire.They all failed to restore Israel’s independence.

What they did,
was provoke the Roman Empire to anger.

What happened
next was the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and finally, the
obliteration of the nation of Israel and dispersal of its people all over the
face of the earth.

This period of
time when the Jewish people lived outside of Israel, around the world, was
called the Diaspora, and continued until 1947, and even up to our own day.

World War II
brought the Holocaust; by far the most tragic of all Israel’s suffering.

For the
Christians, the experience was different.

Following the time
of Christ and after Christians and Jews separated and parted ways, the
Christian began to be persecuted by the Roman Empire.

They were
crucified.

They were fed to
the lions in the coliseum.

They were
brutally killed by the gladiators.

Their demise
became mere ‘sport’ for the Roman Empire.

They were blamed
by Nero for the burning of Rome.

Epic times.

Times of great
suffering.

Times of violent
change.

Such is how the
history of human kind has been written throughout the ages.

One of the facts
of history, is that when faced with these cataclysmic events, each generation
feared that the world was coming to an end.

The prophets
warned of it, such as Daniel in our Old Testament.

So did the
apostle Paul, and especially, John, in the book of Revelation.

Martin Luther saw
the events of his time, where among other things, the plague was devastating Europe,
as signs of the end of times.

And in modern
times, people such as John Darby and his disciples, such people as Hal Lindsey
who wrote the “Late, Great, Planet Earth”, and even more recently, Tim LaHaye,
Jerry B. Jenkins in their “Left Behind” series have speculated about the end of
times.

One of the things
Connie Fagerhaug also told me that night back in Irene, SD was this:

That at the end
of chapter 13 in the Gospel of Mark from which today’s lesson is taken, Jesus
says:"But about that day or hour no one
knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when
the time will come.”

Anyone who tells
you that they know what is happening, and that they have some great insight
into the “end of the world” needs to listen to these words of Jesus.

Jesus himself,
speaking about the calamity that is looming for the Christians and Jewish
people, says “no one knows”, he doesn’t even know, when it will come—“ONLY THE
FATHER.”

“Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am
he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars,
do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For
nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be
earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning
of the birth pangs.”

When we hear
these words of Jesus what can we know?

What do we make
of it all?

And when there
are a whole lot of Christians predicting the end of the world, what do we have
to say?

OK.So first of all, let’s do a reality check.

We do not live at
a time of epic conflict and great human suffering.

We live at a time
of relative peace and prosperity.

Sure, we’ve been
involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, but those ‘wars’ have been minor skirmishes
compared with other conflicts.

And if the Dow Industrial
Average drops a few points, that does not signal the end of the world.

Yes there are
natural disasters like the fires in California, but that’s a bit different than
the ‘end of the world’.

There have been
tragic events such as the murder of those people at the Jewish synagogue in
Pittsburg, but that’s a far cry from the Holocaust.

We live in good
times, in large part, peaceful times.We
plan for our retirement.We enjoy our
families.

Rome is not
burning!Christians are not being
crucified.

There’s one other
thing I want to say today, and that is an insight into the nature of history.

Conflict, in and
of itself, does not signal the end, nor does a personal crisis such as many of
us face from time to time.

Rather this type
of strife is actually the motor that drives change and history and opens up the
door to the future.

Jesus recognizes
this when he says that “This is but the
beginning of the birth pangs.”

Birth pangs.

Suffering that
precedes new life.

That’s a
different picture than predicting the end of the world.

Throughout the
history of the world there have been times of upheaval and human suffering.

And each of us,
experience conflict and challenges in our life.

This does not
mean that the world is coming to an end.

What the Bible
tells us—

What history
tells us—

Is simply that ‘the times, they
are a changing’.

But as difficult
as change can be to accept, we can face the reality of change in our lives, and
the transformation of the world around us, confident that the steadfast love of
the Lord endures forever.

Jesus foretold
the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.Change.But not the end of the
world, just the dawn of a new age.

As horrible as
World War II was, we’re still here.The
world changed.It didn’t end.

Likewise, we face
difficulties in our own lives.And
change is hard.But even death is not
the end.

Through conflict,
turmoil, and change the future unfolds before us.

And through it
all, God is and always shall be the author and giver of life.